Salvation comes through Jesus Christ, and is a gift from God.

Our Liberty is a Gift from God! We ought not to abuse it.

We are seeing increasing calls from various so-called "Christian Leaders" for war and attacks on various countries and peoples in the Middle East. This is a perversion of Scripture, and is motivated by the same demon as drove the Inquisition. They would do well to listen to John Knox, who wrote that the fruits of Christianity should be peace. From page 226 of his "The Reformation in Scotland":

"Give us Thy grace to live in that Christian charity which Thy Son, Our Lord Jesus, has so earnestly commended to all the members of His body; so that other nations, provoked by our example, may set aside all ungodly war, contention, and strife, and study to live in tranquillity and peace, as becometh the sheep of Thy pasture, and the people that daily look for our final deliverance, by the coming again of Our Lord Jesus. To whom, with Thee, and the Holy Spirit, be all Honour, Glory, and Praise, now and forever. Amen."

Defending our Faith in Christ and our Freedoms are allowed. Aggressing against others with whom we disagree is not.

Unlike so many "Preachers" who are calling for wars in the Middle East and for sending other peoples' children to die  in them, John Knox and many of his fellow Reformers were not strangers to the battlefield. In fact, Knox spent a couple years imprisoned on a French galley.

We should defend our Religious Liberties, but NOT try to take away the Religious Liberties of others.

Sir John Skelton wrote in his book 'Mary Stuart' (pg 192): "Whatever was the cause, the Calvinists were the only fighting Protestants. It was they whose faith gave them courage to stand up for the Reformation. In England, Scotland, France, Holland, they, and they only, did the work, and but for them the Reformation would have been crushed. This is why I admire them, and feel there was something in the creed that made them what they were. .... If it had not been for Calvinists, Huguenots, Puritans, and what ever you like to call them, the Pope and Philip would have won, and we should either be Papists or Socialists."

Be true to your Freedoms: as JA Froude wrote on pg 21 of 'The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Church' - "John Knox alone, and the Commons, whom Knox had raised into a political power, remained true. Good reason has Scotland to be proud of Knox. He only in this wild crisis saved the Kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scotch and English freedom."

Those who are willing to suffer to protect their faith in Christ and their religious liberties (which are a gift from God) have my greatest respect. Those who are willing  or even anxious to send others to the other side of the earth to murder others of a different faith have only, and may God forgive me for it, my contempt.

10/18/07 In the Republican primaries, we are seeing so-called leaders of the "Religious Right" willing to endorse serial adulterers, supporters of abortion, supporters of sodomy, and what have you, as long as these Republican "Candidates" are willing and eager to kill selected Middle Easterners. I have to correct myself. These "Leaders" do not have my contempt; they are beneath my contempt. They need to get saved and beg God's forgiveness!